Top Turkish government officials, nearly 100 international dignitaries, and 500 members of the Turkish Jewish community took part in a ceremony commemorating the re-opening of the Great Synagogue of Edirne today after a five-year restoration. The synagogue is claimed to be the largest synagogue in... View full entry »

For months, three architects would meet at the waterfront of Izmir, Turkey’s third-largest city. [...] Eventually it came to them – if you really wanted to bring people in Izmir together, transform the waterfront. But the very idea was daunting: Turkey’s bureaucracy is infamous, and a large-scale project to redevelop the waterfront seemed impossible.

So the friends [...] built eight floating docks out of plywood.
— theguardian.com

Now the barracks plan has been revived. [...] Will one of central Istanbul’s few remaining green spaces become a symbol of consumerist might and the weakness of people power?

Activists have pledged to take to the streets should the plan go forward. “If this project really comes to pass despite the high level of objection from the public, that will create a second wave of uprisings, and this time it will be more influential,” said Eyup Muhcu, the head of Turkey’s main architects’ union.
— nextcity.org

The subterranean settlement was discovered in the Nevşehir province of Turkey’s Central Anatolia region, in the historical area of Cappadocia. [...]

the site, located around the Nevşehir hill fort near the city of Kayseri, appears to dwarf all other finds to date. [...]

The agency has already spent 90 million Turkish liras (£25m) on the development project, but the organisation’s head said he did not see the money spent as a loss due to the magnitude of the historical discovery.
— independent.co.uk

Nodding to the Taksim Square political protests in May 2013, the Serra Gate installation by Istanbul practice GAD Architecture artistically interprets and also invites passers-by to examine the influence of urban interventions in the public realm. Serra Gate, which was inspired by the large-scale sculptures of artist Richard Serra, highlights how protesters created makeshift living spaces inside the park and the streets...
— bustler.net

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has unveiled a new presidential palace on the outskirts of Ankara. The immense project has been built at a reported cost of $350m. The building has been denounced by ecologists as an environmental blight and by the opposition as evidence of Erdogan’s autocratic tendencies. Supporters say the palace is a symbol of what the president touts as his drive towards a ‘new Turkey’
— The Guardian

The question is that Turkey having few (1, 2, 3) historically significant presidential residences, why would anybody tore down forest areas and historically significant farm to build this make do palace? Showcase of power? Well maybe they can put up visiting American diplomats within reach. View full entry »

In the upcoming 2nd Istanbul Design Biennial, "The Future Is Not What It Used To Be" questions the role of design, its relationship to society, and how it can potentially bring change. Curated by Zoë Ryan and spanning all five floors of the Galata Greek Primary School from Nov. 1 to Dec.14, the biennial will showcase a designers' exhibition of over 50 projects that ask who defines the future and how it is defined. But the crucial aspect it explores is whose future could be affected.
— bustler.net

In an area of approximately 2,300 square meters at the Galata Greek Primary School, the exhibition will feature more than 50 projects by designers worldwide. The event will also host various creative academic workshops, panels, and film screenings.N°40 Workoutcomputer by Desireee Heiss and Ines... View full entry »

Depicting the Sancaklar Mosque, commissioned by Sancaklar Foundation and designed by EAA -- Emre Arolat Architects, this film is a semi-documentary salute to this distinguished example of modern architecture, which stands out among Turkey's Islamic places of worship dominated by historicist building typologies.

SGMStudio (Sarraf | Galeyan | Mekanik) has filmed a short documentary on EAA – Emre Arolat Architects’ Sancaklar Mosque -a building that stands out as one of the rare examples of modern architecture among Turkey's Islamic places of worship. SGMStudio’s “Sancaklar Mosque” premiered at... View full entry »

The Turkish Council of State has ordered three luxury apartment blocks to be bulldozed amid widespread outrage. But will it have any impact on the country’s unstoppable, and often unlawful, construction boom?
— theguardian.com

Istanbul is the city of transformation and contradiction. As an urbanist, I am trying to keep record and make sense of this transformation and am especially interested in its winners and losers. At the moment we live in a giant construction site, where skyscrapers, mega projects and urban renewal projects are taking place all around. There is a gold rush to real-estate development.
— theguardian.com

The compact, two-level store itself is entirely under the plaza, but is topped by a first-ever rectangular “penthouse” composed of four single panes of glass and a roof. Portions of the store are visible through the windows from the plaza level. The store’s two glass staircases are also visible through huge glass panes over the top of each stair run on the sides of the store.
— ifoapplestore.com

“Places of Memory,” a medley of work by five contemporary artists from Turkey, will make up Turkey's first-ever showcase this summer at the Venice Biennale's prestigious architecture exhibition. [...]

Architect Murat Tabanlıoğlu, the curator of the Turkish pavilion, explained during Monday's news conference that they will be putting on a show delving into three areas of İstanbul: Taksim-Salıpazarı, Bab-ı Ali and Büyükdere Avenue, all of which marked a threshold in Tabanlıoğlu's life.
— todayszaman.com

Results are out for the Çanakkale Antenna Tower competition, Turkey's first international competition since 1997. After being shortlisted in Stage Two, Powerhouse Company & IND (Inter.National.Design) won 1st Prize out of 8 finalist teams, including renowned names like Sou Fujimoto and Snøhetta. The city's government plans to have the 100-meter broadcasting tower completed in 2015.

The Colloquium and Award Ceremony will take place on March 15 in Çanakkale.
— bustler.net

Many of the world’s displaced live in conditions striking for their wretchedness, but what is startling about Kilis is how little it resembles the refugee camp of our imagination. It is orderly, incongruously so. Residents scan a card with their fingerprints for entry [...]. Inside, it’s stark: 2,053 identical containers spread out in neat rows. No tents. None of the smells — rotting garbage, raw sewage — usually associated with human crush and lack of infrastructure.
— nytimes.com

Istanbul is still a very pretty city but that is not all. It is also a city in transformation under the impacts of neo-liberalism via the global age of unjust changes. Ekumonopolis looks at these conditions site specifically in Istanbul, called by George Brugmans as one of the oldest and, in the... View full entry »